Ireland

by Joseph Coohill

  In the meantime, the government had considered amending the Home Rule bill, giving Ulster a temporary exclusion. By this time, however, World War I had started and Britain entered it on 4 August 1914. The Home Rule bill, which had been lingering since January 1913, was then given the royal assent by King George on 18 September 1914. The government had insisted on this in order to quell Irish disturbances during the war. In a concession to unionists, however, it passed another bill which delayed the implementation of Home Rule until the war was over. The question of whether Ulster would take part in a future Home Rule Ireland was not resolved.

  WAR IN EUROPE AND WAR IN IRELAND, 1914–22

  The First World War split Irish nationalists. Some, like Redmond, thought that the war was for the freedom of small nations, and that Ireland should support the allies since it was a small nation struggling for freedom. He argued that if the Irish volunteered for the British army and fought in the war, then Irish claims for independence would be taken more seriously by both Britain and the international community after the war. But many other nationalists, including Sinn Féin and the IRB, were opposed to the war and could not conceive of an alliance with Britain. The effect of this was that the Irish Volunteers split into those who supported participation in the war (and who changed their name to the National Volunteers), and those who opposed entry into the war (who retained the name Irish Volunteers). The National Volunteers were in the majority, and many of them joined the British army. Although they were a minority, the new Irish Volunteers were more militant in their thinking, and began planning for an insurrection. The IRB also became more heavily involved in militant nationalism when their organizational director, Patrick Pearse (1879–1916), began to strengthen links between the IRB and the Irish Volunteers. Pearse, along with Joseph Mary Plunkett (1887–1916) and Thomas MacDonagh (1878–1916), thought that a revolution was necessary not only to gain independence, but to cleanse Ireland of its confused efforts at Home Rule and to provide a blood sacrifice as a symbol to the Irish people. (This was not unique thinking at the time. Some British and French intellectuals thought that the First World War would prove to be a cleansing experience.) Pearse was a powerful orator and on 1 August 1915, he gave the funeral oration for Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, the old Fenian who had died in New York and whose body had been returned to Ireland. At Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, Pearse used O’Donovan Rossa’s body to symbolize the dead heroes of Ireland’s struggle against Britain, and said that, no matter how many weak Home Rule bills were passed, the Irish would not rest until they had achieved full independence. His oft-repeated words became slogans for militant nationalism.

  Life springs from death; and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations. The Defenders of this Realm . . . think they have pacified Ireland . . . but the fools, the fools, the fools! They have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.

  While these were to become inspirational words in April 1916, it should be remembered that this idea of the necessity of a blood sacrifice was a minority view even among nationalists.

  From late 1914 until April 1916, the Irish Volunteers and James Connolly’s Citizen Army organized and drilled in Dublin and Wicklow. Contacts were made with Germany to provide arms for an Irish rising. Sir Roger Casement (1864–1916), an Ulster Protestant and former British civil servant, went to the United States to raise money and to Germany to try to recruit Irish prisoners of war for the planned rebellion. Preoccupied with the European war, the British government only put up mild resistance to Irish nationalist propaganda. In January 1916, Pearse and the military council of the IRB planned a rebellion for Easter Sunday, 23 April 1916. Dublin was to be the centre, but there were rebellions planned for other cities as well. Some important members of the IRB and the Volunteers objected to what they thought would be a suicidal revolt, but they were quickly overwhelmed by Pearse and the others, who argued that, since German arms were already on the way, it was too late to call off the rebellion. But this organizational confusion meant that the German ship Aud was not able to land on the Kerry coast on Thursday or early Friday 20–21 April. It was intercepted by a British ship and scuttled by its captain, sending its cargo of 20,000 rifles to the bottom of the sea. Casement landed near Tralee in Kerry on the same day, but was soon arrested by the British. He was taken to London, put on trial for treason and executed on 3 August. When he heard about the Aud and Casement, Eoin MacNeill (1867–1945), the chief of staff of the Irish Volunteers, cancelled the planned Sunday rebellion. Some of the other rebels then met on Sunday 23 April and decided to go ahead with the rebellion the next day, Easter Monday. Because of the confusion and conflicting orders, the rising mainly took place in Dublin, with only scattered action in other parts of the country.

  On Monday morning, Pearse led 1,558 Volunteers and Connolly led 219 members of his Citizen Army in a Dublin rebellion which captured the General Post Office (GPO) and other important strategic points in the city, including the Four Courts, Liberty Hall and City Hall. The GPO became headquarters for the rebellion, and it was here that Pearse read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. The British army counterattacked on 25 April, recovering several important buildings and cordoning off many of the rebels’ avenues of communication. British reinforcements soon arrived from Belfast and other military posts in Ireland. On 27 April, the army started to shell the GPO and the Four Courts. Pearse and his rebels retreated from the burning GPO on 28 April, and were captured the next day.

  It is difficult, if not impossible, to gauge the reaction of Dublin citizens because there was no contemporary reporting of the events of the Rising until May. People were urged to stay at home, and it is very unlikely that any solid information about the Rising reached them. There were, however, a number of rumours which seemed to spread rapidly. The first and most prevalent was that the Rising was part of a German invasion, or that it was laying the grounds for one. This rumour caused many people to be disgusted with the rebels. These were most probably Dublin unionists, who may have had family members serving in the trenches in France. They were, of course, greatly opposed to the Rising, and thought it was a betrayal of the Irish men serving in the British army. Redmond stated in the House of Commons on 27 April that Irish people were horrified at the Rising, but he was in no position to know because he was in London. It is clear from many eyewitness reports that there was some sympathy for the rebels, and that this came from ordinary Dubliners who expressed regret that the Rising had failed. Sir John Maxwell (1859–1929), the British Commander, said that many people who witnessed the Rising and were on the streets immediately after it sympathized with the rebels. Any hostility which the rebels endured while being marched away was mainly from some Dublin unionists, and from the wives of soldiers in the British army.

  Between 3 and 12 May, the British military court in Dublin tried and executed fifteen of the rebels, including Pearse and Connolly and those who had signed the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. Other participants in the rebellion were arrested and jailed in England and Ireland. The execution of the Rising’s leaders was received with shock and outrage by many people in Dublin. As stated above, there was a base of sympathetic support for the rebels, but even those nationalists like Redmond, who had opposed them, condemned the executions. The poems and writings of Pearse and others became popular reading, and copies of their pictures were put up in many homes. Although it did not look likely when they surrendered, the rebels’ idea of a blood sacrifice came true after the executions.

  Because of this change in public opinion, the British government soon realized that it must make some concessions to avoid further trouble. Between August 1916 and July 1917, the imprisoned Easter rebels were released. They were welcomed back to Ireland as heroes. The new British Liberal Prime Minister, David Lloyd George (1863–1945), re-opened negotiations with Redmond on Home Rule, with the temporary exclusion of six Ulster counties (Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londo
nderry and Tyrone – the counties of Northern Ireland today). Redmond rejected this offer because he found out that Lloyd George had promised unionists that this arrangement would be permanent. Another meeting of all Irish parties was agreed to, and Home Rulers and unionists met in Dublin from July 1917 to April 1918. The Irish Volunteers and Sinn Féin, now militarized by Eamon de Valera (1882–1975), a commander during the Easter Rising, refused to attend the meeting because they thought it would end in partition of the island. But the meeting could not agree on a solution, and Redmond died suddenly during the conference in March 1918. De Valera was arrested on 17 May 1918 on a charge of plotting with the Germans, and imprisoned in Lincoln jail in England.

  Redmond’s death, along with the massive victory for Sinn Féin in the general election of December 1918, meant that Irish nationalism had been taken away from the Irish Parliamentary Party. Sinn Féin won seventy-three seats, the Irish Parliamentary Party six, and the unionists twenty-six. Sinn Féin, however, refused to accept the authority of the British parliament and to sit in the House of Commons. They set up Dáil Éireann [dawl air-un], an Irish parliament, at Mansion House in Dublin on 21 January 1919. The Dáil operated as a full government, setting up its own court system, land bank and other important offices. On 3 February 1919, Eamon de Valera escaped from Lincoln jail with the help of two important Dáil members, Michael Collins (1890–1922) and Harry Boland (1887–1922). De Valera returned to Dublin as President of the Dáil, and almost immediately went to the United States on a fund-raising trip. Although he succeeded in raising much money, disputes between Irish-American politicians and other problems prevented de Valera from gaining what he most wanted – official recognition of the Irish Republic as a sovereign state from the United States government. While he was gone, Michael Collins began to strengthen the Dáil’s connections with the IRB and the Volunteers. Although some important Dáil members thought this was unconstitutional, Collins proceeded, building up an impressive, but unofficial, Irish guerrilla army.

  The Easter Rising had left militant nationalism in disarray until Collins started to revive its organization. The Irish Volunteers became known as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) after January 1919, and they began a guerrilla war against British government in Ireland, the Anglo-Irish War (1919–21). The IRA focused primarily on the Royal Irish Constabulary (the paramilitary police force in Ireland). They attacked RIC outposts and barracks, killed RIC officers and constables and raided RIC weapons depots. The IRA were very successful initially, with the RIC defeated in many areas of the country. The British government responded by sending army troops to Ireland, and two new forces were created from British soldiers who had served in the First World War. These forces were intended to supplement the RIC (which was largely made up of local Catholic men). Owing to a shortage of RIC uniforms, many of these transferred soldiers wore khaki military trousers and dark green (almost black) police tunics, earning them the nickname Black and Tans. Along with the other new force, the Auxiliaries, the Black and Tans fought a counter-guerrilla war with the IRA, and earned a reputation for ferocity and brutality in their reprisals. British public opinion was often shocked at their actions, and a Peace with Ireland Council was formed. On the world stage, this war was a propaganda victory for the IRA. Many other nations saw an inconsistency in Britain being part of the dismantling of other European empires during the settlement of the First World War, yet retaining their empire and control of Ireland.

  Although the Home Rule bill which was due to come into effect at the end of the war had been bypassed by militant Irish nationalism and stubborn Irish unionism, the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, put forward a new Home Rule solution for Ireland in 1920, during the height of the Anglo-Irish War. He proposed two parliaments in Ireland, one for the six Ulster counties, and another for the rest of the country. For the first time, unionists accepted a form of Home Rule (for themselves), but the nationalists in the south refused the offer. They argued that the Irish people wanted an Irish republic for the whole island. Their republican ideals were firmly held at this point, and so the Anglo-Irish War continued on its bloody and destructive path. Finally, Lloyd George realized that he must negotiate with the republicans. A general truce was called on 9 July 1921. Lloyd George offered Eamon de Valera and the Dáil dominion status within the British Empire, much like Canada. De Valera and the Dáil rejected this offer, but agreed to treaty negotiations in October 1921. De Valera sent Michael Collins, Arthur Griffith and four other members of the Dáil to London to meet with Lloyd George and the British cabinet. De Valera stayed in Dublin, possibly to keep an eye on extreme militants, or perhaps because he knew that he and Lloyd George were at a stalemate, and that different personalities might be better negotiators. He instructed the Irish delegation not to accept any partition of Ireland.

  The negotiations which led to the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 6 December 1921 were difficult and trying. Lloyd George was under pressure from unionists to provide a measure of self-rule for some Ulster counties, and also from British public opinion, which desperately wanted peace with Ireland. The Dáil delegation was told by de Valera to retain the unity of the island of Ireland. The talks came down to two important issues, the question of partition and of allegiance to the British crown. After many fraught verbal battles, Lloyd George offered the republicans a partitioned Ireland, but with a boundary commission which would discuss the placing of the border according to public opinion in the affected counties (although the eventual treaty added that economic and other geographical considerations had to be taken into account as well). The southern part of the divided Ireland would take dominion status within the British Commonwealth. The Dáil in Dublin rejected this offer, and sent the Irish delegation back to London for further negotiations. The main figures in the delegation were starting to believe that Lloyd George’s offer was the best that could be obtained under the circumstances. Griffith had always thought that a dual monarchy was the best avenue for Irish independence (indeed he had based some of his original Sinn Féin ideas on it). Dominion status was close enough for him. Perhaps more than anyone, Collins knew that the guerrilla Anglo-Irish War could not have gone on much longer before the IRA began to run out of resources and men. If there was a resumption of hostilities, the full might of the British army would be too much for them.

  The full might of the British army was exactly what Lloyd George offered the Irish delegation on 5 December 1921 when they returned to tell him of the Dáil’s rejection of his proposal. He said that if the Irish delegation did not sign the treaty, ‘. . . it is war, and war within three days’. Collins, Griffith and the rest of the Irish delegation signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty on 6 December 1921. It established the Irish Free State and the Province of Northern Ireland as separate political entities. Knowing that the treaty would spark off much hostility in Ireland, Michael Collins said, ‘I may have signed my actual death-warrant.’ The Irish delegation returned to Dublin, and the Dáil debated the treaty in early January. De Valera and other Sinn Féiners rejected the treaty outright. They also objected to remaining within the British Commonwealth; the issue of partition was surprisingly little discussed. After a bitter debate, the Dáil ratified the treaty by a slim margin of sixty-four to fifty-seven on 7 January 1922. De Valera resigned as president, and withdrew from the Dáil, along with many of his supporters. Although the Free State was to remain in the British Commonwealth until 1948, most of its domestic governance devolved to the Dáil. The province of Northern Ireland was to remain an integral part of the United Kingdom.

  INTERPRETATIONS

  In a confrontational, bloody and permanent way, the events described in this chapter symbolized ideas of nationalism, unionism and Irish identity. At the same time, they set the stage for what was to become the modern Irish Republic, the province of Northern Ireland and the political troubles that plague the province today. If we look at the interpretations of the Easter Rising, the collapse of Home Rule and the partition of Ireland, and ideas of
nationalism and unionism, we can see just how ideas and attitudes were as central to this period as the events described above. Questions about nationalism, unionism and Irish identity were hopelessly bound up in the politics of this troubled time.

  INTERPRETATIONS – THE EASTER RISING

  For such a well-known event in modern Irish history, and one that has captured the public imagination in literature and film, the 1916 Easter Rising has had a curious history of interpretation. For much of the half-century after the Rising, very little scholarly work was done on it, even though it formed an important part of the political consciousness of the Free State and many prominent politicians (such as Eamonn de Valera) had either participated in the Rising or were of that generation. The first works that appeared about the Rising were mainly popular biographies of its leaders, such as Patrick Pearse, who were generally treated as heroes.

  The first major scholarly contribution to interpretation of the Rising came from Professor F.X. Martin in an article in 1948 (‘Eoin MacNeill on the 1916 Rising’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 11). He analysed some previously unused memoranda written by Eoin MacNeill, who had tried to call the rebellion off when arms shipments did not arrive and organizational problems made any rising seem hopeless. These documents showed that MacNeill was even more opposed to a hopeless rising than had been thought. MacNeill had argued that to continue with the rebellion when it had no chance of success was not only tactically foolish, but morally wrong. Anyone who would be killed in such an action, he said, would have been murdered, rather than having died in a legitimate military battle. Military legitimacy was important to men like O’Neill because they wanted the republic they sought to be founded on international principles of government, rather than being grabbed by terrorist action. MacNeill’s ideas encapsulated a central point of debate about the planned Rising. Some thought that it should be the start of a general, and relatively orthodox, rebellion against the British. Others believed that Ireland needed to be shocked into action by a blood sacrifice and the creation of martyrs. Professor Martin’s article received a great deal of attention (especially given that it appeared in an academic journal), but it was not until eighteen years later (the fiftieth anniversary of the Rising in 1966) that another important interpretative work appeared. This also came from Martin, in his edited book, Leaders and Men of the Easter Rising. In this book, the various contributors attempted to show that the Rising was more significant than just a mainly Dublin-based event of relatively short duration. It was part of a larger picture of the tense period since the Home Rule crisis starting in 1912. Whereas Martin’s earlier article (and some popular studies of the Rising) had focused on the behind-the-scenes workings of the conspirators and the participants in the events of Easter week, this book concentrated very much on the public side of things. Looked at in this way, the Rising became part of a more general narrative of the politics of the period, and the events preceeding it had a great deal of effect on the planners and rebels. Many of the contributors to this volume, while broadening the focus of interpretation of the Rising, did not reject many of the more traditional ideas about its participants. In some cases, they were hailed as martyrs and as patriots who had the future happiness of all Irish people (Catholic and Protestant) in mind.